If so, what knots are you using?
Clinch knot with mono - improved clinch with flourocarbon.
Palomar knot from main leader to tippet ring. Becker (Orvis) Knot from tippet to ring.
I use both rings and micro-swivels with an improved clinch knot.
Using 4mm soldered round, 2.6mm inside diameter, 22 gauge rings, I can loop connect with 4-6x tippet material. My typical loops are tied with double surgeons knot. I suspect tippet size is governed by I.D. of tippet ring.
BTW I recently have noticed that whenever I must break free my snagged tippet, the break is usually within 2-3" of the connecting loop. Tippet material is mono and not fluorocarbon. Anyone else notice this?
I use tippet rings on just about all my leaders now. On some leaders I use two rings. I use mono on dry fly leaders and fluorocarbon on nymph leaders. In both cases, I use an improved clinch knot to tie to the ring. An improved clinch knot to a tippet ring should be about 90% strength. Joining tippet with a surgeon’s knot is about 70% strength.
Use micro-swivels but same idea. Pitzen knots both sides, but there’s no reason to change whatever you typically use for a terminal knot.
I use a Davy knot to tie on the fly - or a Double Davy for large flies - and while the knot works just fine it somehow didn’t seem like enough knot for the rings. I guess that’s kind of silly if I trust it for the fly, but adding two more of them seemed kinda scary. Being terribly lazy I normally don’t even use a tippet; I just keep using the leader until it gets too short or too fat , which is dumb and I need to change that. Back when I did change tippets I used the Orvis tippet knot which I remember as being kind of a pain to tie.
I use an improved clinch knot then a drop of super glue (if I make my leaders at home). If I am on the water then just the improved clinch knot. I am using steelhead size tippet rings, they are a little bigger but work real good.
where do you place your swivel? leader to tippet, leader to fly line? thanks
where do you locate your swivel? tippet to leader, leader to fly line? thanks
I personally don’t use tippet rings, but when someone orders my furled leaders with tippet rings I recommend using a perfection loop on their tippet.
I’ve been using tippet rings on thread furled leaders, and occasionally fluoro furled leaders, for about thirteen years.
The only knot I have used to connect the tippet to the (thread or fluoro ) leader is the standard ( not improved ) clinch knot.
Two quick anecdotes. First, in the fall of '15, I hooked up a very large bull trout on a Northern Idaho freestone river on an FEB October Caddis. I estimated the fish to be in the 30" range. I was fishing a thread furled leader with a 4x tippet connected to the tippet ring with a standard clinch knot. I didn’t land the fish even though I applied as much pressure as I thought I could get away with without breaking off for 28 minutes, before the fish leveraged out the long shank hook and went bye-bye. That’s a long time for a thread leader, tippet ring and clinch knotted tippet to stand up to constant pressure against a very large and exceptionally strong fish.
Second, in the spring of '16, I was fishing a J.A.R.S. nymph with a 4wt Rio nymph line fastened ( with a Castwell knot ) to a fluoro furled leader with a tippet ring connected with a standard clinch knot to several feet of 0X tippet. Unexpectedly, I hooked a Clearwater B run steelhead which typically run 32"-36". This fish was typical. I decided to hold it or lose it. It made seven or eight really hard charges to reach the fast mid-stream current in the eight minutes it took to land it. A few minutes later, I hooked a second such steelhead which took about as many hard changes to escape the softer water and took about as long to land. The same furled fluoro leader is still on the line ( which I don’t often use ).
'nuff said.
John